While Midrash Rabba increases the astonishing amount to 9 seah, the Ramban grapples with the huge amount, and suggests that others ate with them in their honor, or that one should parse it as that she should take 3 seah of coarse flour and sift it to extract a far smaller amount of fine flour.

Ramban also suggests that אולי ידע הסתלקות המאכל ראשון ראשון, והוא כמרבה עולות למזבח. If I understand this correctly, then he is saying that Avraham was aware of the ethereal nature of his guests, and that they would then be able to 'eat' all of this, and it was like increasing burnt-offerings for the altar.

I could suggest that, since Avraham ate 74X as much as a normal person, as per the last brayta in Masechet Soferim, he estimated that each guest would eat that much as well. 144 / 74 ~= 2 eggs.

After citing the Ramban's concern, he writes that "one could say that behold, Avraham thought that they were Arabs, and it is forbidden to bake on Yom Tov for the sake of a gentile (and this works either according to the opinion that it was Pesach or the opinion that it was Succot). {Josh: But not according to the position that it was erev Pesach.} But in the gemara (Beitza 17a) they say that a woman may fill an oven with bread in order that the bread {in general} will bake well, when the oven is full. And therefore he needed to increase a lot of bread, so that the oven would be permitted to bake all of it."

He also has a suggestion within Ramban's suggestion that there was sifting of the 3 seah down to a smaller amount:

Basically, an amount such that when it reached the smaller amount, there would be a full day's bread for each of them.

Shadal addresses the question and suggests that not all of it was for the meal:שלש סאים: לא כולם לאכול מיד, אלא שיקחו להם לדרכם לצידה.

"Not that all of them would be eaten immediately, but rather that they would take it with them on the road as provisions."

Radak suggests that each would get a single loaf the size of a seah, and this enormous loaf was derech kavod.

I would try to solve this in another way. Who says we know what a seah is? Yes, in Mishnaic Hebrew it has a definition of 6 kav, but that does not mean that it must have that definition in Tanach. Or forget Tanach. The word seah only occurs once the entirety of Torah and that is here. Even if the other few scattered examples of seah in Nach do mean this large measure, there is no certitude that the seah measure did not change. Indeed, Gray points out that by the contest of Eliyahu and the prophets of Baal on Har HaCarmel, in I Melachim 18:

34 And he said: 'Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the burnt-offering, and on the wood.' And he said: 'Do it the second time'; and they did it the second time. And he said: 'Do it the third time'; and they did it the third time.

35 And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

The trench, 100 cubits X 500 cubits, filled with water, from just 4 jugs? Even if they were large jugs, and indeed poured out 3 times, that would not fill the trench!

Maybe, then, we are dealing with a smaller seah measurement.

Looking at Dr. Tawil's Akkadian Lexicon Companion for Biblical Hebrew Etymological, Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalence, I see the following. Besides the citation of Gray, he connect BH סאה to Akkadian sutu, and defines it as a measuring vessel. He writes:

In BH סְאָה, which contains one-third of an אֵיפָה, is attested nine time, in eight of which it connotes a measuring vessel (Gen 18:6, 1Sam 25:18, 2Kgs 7:1 (twice), 16, 18 (twice)). cf. Akka: shumma tamkarum she'am u kaspam ana chubullim iddinma inuma ana chubullim iddinu kaspam ina abnim matitim u she'am ina sutim matitim iddin, "if a merchant lends barley or silver, and when lending it he uses a small weight for the silver and a small sutu for the barley."

I changed the Akkadian to put in "sh" and "ch". But anyway, we see that there is a notion in Akkadian of a "small seah", as opposed to (presumably) a "large seah". So seah was not always the large seah. Say this, then, by Avraham and Sarah as well. He instructed her to measure out three small-measures, with the small seah, of fine flour. And how much is that. Presumably enough for the bread part of a meal for three guests (plus, perhaps, Avraham).

3 comments:

Yaakov
said...

The opinion that the extra flour was 'for the road' makes the most sense. These angels appeared to Avraham in a way that he viewed them as travellers, but presumably they didn't bother appearing with any food or drink. When Avraham saw this he would have thought he was seeing starving wanderers in the wilderness with nothing to keep them going. When you look at it that way it also makes his hurry to provide food more sensible. He's not just helping guests, he's providing food for people that he thinks are about to starve to death.

The explanation of 3 seah of course flour being sifted to a smaller amount of fine flour made alot of sense to me. The problem, of' course, is that the scriptures pretty clearly say "three measures of fine flour." Also worth noting is that in the next verse Abraham has a calf prepared, in addition to the bread (bigest meal EVER). It also says he stood by the tree as they ate. Implying that he didn't join their meal.BTW - This a great article. I was wondering this exact thing when I read this passage and looked up how much a "seah" is.

The explanation of 3 seah of course flour being sifted to a smaller amount of fine flour made alot of sense to me. The problem, of' course, is that the scriptures pretty clearly say "three measures of fine flour." Also worth noting is that in the next verse Abraham has a calf prepared, in addition to the bread (bigest meal EVER). It also says he stood by the tree as they ate. Implying that he didn't join their meal.BTW - This a great article. I was wondering this exact thing when I read this passage and looked up how much a "seah" is.

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parshablog is published by (rabbi) josh waxman (joshwaxman [at] yahoo [dot] com), a grad student in Revel, a grad student in a Phd program in computer science at CUNY. i recently received semicha from RIETS. this blog is devoted to parsha as well as whatever it is i am currently learning.